Analyzing the topological structure of composite dynamical systems

This chapter explores dynamical structural equation models (DSEMs) and their nonlinear generalizations into sheaves of dynamical systems. It demonstrates these two disciplines on part of the food web in the Bering Sea. The translation from DSEMs to sheaves passes through a formal construction borrowed from electronics called a netlist that specifies how data route through a system. A sheaf can be considered a formal hypothesis about how variables interact, that then specifies how observations can be tested for consistency, how missing data can be inferred, and how uncertainty about the observations can be quantified. Sheaf modeling provides a coherent mathematical framework for studying the interaction of various dynamical subsystems that together determine a larger system.